Book of the Decade

Widely banned and vilified when it was published in 1922, Ulysses has since been acknowledged as the greatest novel of the century. Penned by James Joyce, an emigre from Dublin, this epic story of one day blends virtuoso stylistic innovation and pastiche with the simple longings and betrayals of family life. Leopold Bloom, the protagonist, is a modern, urban version of the mythic Greek warrior Odysseus. A Dubliner and a jew, Bloom is everyman and exile; sensual fantasist and empathic philosopher; a 20th-century anti-hero who is great in his gentle, solitary ordinariness.